Guccifer speaks, NBC edition (4)

Chris White takes note of the excerpt of the NBC News interview with Romanian hacker Guccifer that was broadcast last night. Guccifer claims to have hacked Hillary Clinton’s private email server. He says it was easy. White observes: “Somewhat skeptical of Guccifer’s claims, NBC News asked multiple cybersecurity experts to analyze Guccifer’s claims of how he accessed Clinton’s server, and all reportedly concluded that it was possible.” He then quotes from last night’s report:

[A] former FBI special agent who ran major cybersecurity probes found [Guccifer’s] story credible.

NBC News asked Chris Tarbell, who broke open the Silk Road case, to review Lazar’s explanation of how he got into the server.

“It’s plausible,” Chris Tarbell said, adding that Lazar’s conviction for hacking in Romania showed he had the know-how to carry it out.

Tarbell added that he could not imagine why Lazar would make up a claim that could get him in very hot water.

“To go on television and admit to a felony you didn’t commit seems a little silly,” he said.

Tarbell is the legendary former FBI agent specializing in cyber crimes. David Gilbert has hailed him as the Elliot Ness of cyberspace. In addition to Guccifer’s explosive claims, NBC presented Tarbell’s expert opinion that what Guccifer said he did to get into Clinton’s server was entirely plausible.

And then we have this. NBC also reports reaching out to other unnamed cyber security experts who all agreed with Tarbell. That seems worthy of note.

NBC regurgitates the talking point that the Clinton server logs show no evidence of foreign hacking. When correspondent Cynthia McFadden asked Tarbell about that, however, he told her that server logs don’t always show evidence of hacking.

Despite the Clintonian force field that seems to have inhibited NBC’s airing of this story and the misdirection within it, someone must be turning up the heat.